This is one of the best books I have read this year. The topic is up to date and relevant for many contexts. Each author contributes to the originality of this edited book. The editors, Pavlenko & Blackledge, have done a wonderful job in putting together a series of texts that demonstrate how negotiation of identities is embedded within larger socioeconomic, sociohistoric and sociopolitical contexts. In order to situate their own framework, the editors start by examining different approaches to the negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. The sociopsychological approach examines the negotiation of identities in second language learning and language use. However, this approach treats learning trajectories as linear and unidirectional, with little acknowledgment of the fact that learning language and identity building are more complex. Interactional sociolinguistics focuses on the negotiation of identities via code-switching and language choice. This approach sees social identities as more fluid and constructed through linguistic and social interaction. However, even though much sociolinguistic research examines the negotiation of languages choices and identities in multilingual contexts, Pavlenko & Blackledge claim that few have tried to theorize it. In this book, they propose a poststructuralist and critical theory approach to negotiation of identities. Based on the work of Gal 1989, Heller 1988, 1992, 1995a, 1995b, and Woolard 1985, 1989, 1998, the editors argue that language choice in multilingual contexts is embedded in larger social, political, economic, and cultural systems. Their interest is in how languages are used to legitimize, challenge and negotiate specific identities, and to open new identity options for groups and individuals who are subjugated. Their framework combines aspects of the social constructionist approach, which focuses on discursive construction of identities, and the poststructuralist emphasis on power relations. The editors explain in detail what they mean by identities embedded within power relations with the work of Bourdieu. They also focus on identity narratives that reconstruct the links among past, present, and future, and they impose coherence where it was missing.

The book has four central themes: (i) Linguistic and identity options are limited to specific sociohistoric contexts, contested and reinvented; (ii) diverse identity options and their links to language varieties are valued differently; (iii) some identity options may be negotiable, while others are imposed or assumed; and (iv) individuals are agentive and are constantly seeking new social and linguistic resources that allow them to resist identities, produce new identities, and assign alternative meanings to the links between identities and linguistic varieties.

In chap. 1, Aneta Pavlenko discusses narrative identities constructed in the autobiographies of immigrants to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, who discuss their stories of assimilation. She explores ways in which these immigrants imagine and legitimize new identities for themselves and their fellow immigrants. She also compares the autobiographies of the first immigrants with those of the ones who are writing now. She shows how some immigrants imagined themselves as legitimate Americans, while racial minorities (e.g., Asian immigrants) had no access to the negotiation process. She demonstrates how second language learning is more powerful now for immigrants in their memoirs than in the past, when national identity was more a concern for them. I particularly enjoyed this chapter because it demonstrates the difference between the past and the present in immigrants' narratives, and how second language learning is more difficult now than it was in the past, for different reasons.

In the second chapter, Adrian Blackledge examines how the “race riots” in northern England in 2001 challenged English legislation. Blackledge analyzes speech and texts from the British Parliament in order to understand the discourses on learning English for new immigrants; he discovers that understanding English is linked with good race relations, and that “good English” has become a condition for social cohesion. The language debate is a struggle over whether English people can be multilingual when English is thought of as the route to assimilation and homogeneity for new immigrants.

In chap. 3, Meredith Doran proposes a study on the use of the variety “verlan” in suburban Paris and how children use this language to build a third space. This chapter looks at young people using verlan as a mediation tool between themselves and as a means of distinguishing themselves from mainstream French speakers.

In chap. 6, Giampapa examines how three Italian-Canadians negotiate their identities in relation to the notion of center and periphery from different perspectives (workplaces, peer relations) (Giddens 1984, Grimard & Labrie 1999). In this chapter, the author demonstrates well how the discourses of identity, language, and the representations of italianità play a defining role with regard to who is at the center and who is at the periphery. The author demonstrates how some identities are negotiable and others are not.

In chap. 7, Celeste Kinginger presents four years in the life of Alice, an American girl who wanted to learn French and went to France, having been attracted by myths and false ideas about France. In the chapter and after reading Alice's notes, we discover how Alice had to negotiate her social, linguistic, gender, and class identities. She had a mission when she went to France, and she was disappointed at first. She expected some cultural consciousness; she thought that everyone would be “cultural”; she thought that she would meet a lot of people and they would invite her into their lives. By the end, she made contacts with natives and discovered that learning a second language requires effort, and she had to focus to continue to learn. In this essay, Kinginger demonstrates how social practices are relevant to the foreign language learning field.

All the chapters are very well written. They all make effective use of data (texts, interviews, observations, journals) to make their points. All the authors know how to apply their ethnographic or discourse analysis methods profitably. The book is interesting, and one of a kind in the field of sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis. It is also very useful for teachers or anyone interested in second language learning and the construction of identities. At the end, I was disappointed only by the fact that I would have liked the editors to provide a concluding chapter, as I didn't want the book to end.